Carlos Ghosn Saw It Coming — Said No More Battery Swap Vehicles Before Better Place Folded

Carlos Ghosn is and interesting man. He’s a French Lebanese Brazilian businessman and is Chairman and CEO of both Paris-based Renault and Japan-based Nissan. He’s one of the notable figures most optimistic about the future of electric vehicles.

Aside from the Nissan Leaf, the lesser known and lesser sold Renault Fluence ZE is a fully electric car Ghosn of which has overseen the production and sales.

About 3,500 of the vehicles have been sold to date, compared to about 50,000 Leafs. The car came with a battery swap model like Better Place tried unsuccessfully to capitalize on. To be specific, it was the first electric car enabled with battery swapping technology and deployed within the Better Place network in Israel and Denmark (just last year, 2012). Just prior to Better Place’s bankruptcy announcement, Ghosn announced that it was unlikely the company would offer such an option with any other models. Clearly, Ghosn knew what was up.

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